![]() Tom Scutt’s stage design is expressionistic and imaginative: a train journey is represented by a model train revolving around the outer part of the three-tiered, circular stage. Together, they are magnificently tender and tragic. “What Would You Do?” sings the Fraulein, and we feel her caught between the immovable forces of fascism, survival, and love. They become this production’s heart, first surprised to have found love so late and then broken when Nazi fervour drives them apart. Their scenes together feel static and are side-lined by the passion of the show’s older couple: the boarding house landlady, Fraulein Schneider (Liza Sadovy), and the Jewish grocer, Herr Schultz (Elliot Levey). Together, they do not spark romantic chemistry as the central couple. Omari Douglas brings a gentle sweetness to his part as the bisexual American novelist, Clifford Bradshaw, but seems hemmed in by the role, as muted as his beige suit, though there is one flaring moment of passion when he kisses another man. But she sings with astonishing command, and there is an especially breath-taking version of “Cabaret” which is full of zombie-like darkness that sucks all of Minnelli’s froth out of it. Here she is a plummy-voiced Sloane who is emphatically unsexy with an edge of severity. Buckley plays her as the opposite of Liza Minnelli’s fun-loving chanteuse. Jessie Buckley, as Sally Bowles, first emerges as a glassy-eyed, underage sex-bomb – an obscene Shirley Temple in a frou-frou dress. ![]() Rebecca Frecknall’s production on the whole lives up to its hype, magnetising us with flamboyant camp and then delivering menace that feels freshly charged. He gives an immense, physicalised performance, both muscular and delicate, from his curled limbs to his tautly expressive fingertips. ![]() It does not matter that Redmayne’s voice is drowned out by the orchestra at times.
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